The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross (8 page)

So I needed to perform a resurrection, and I needed to do it fast. But I barely had any grace left after resurrecting myself. I was really going to have to stop getting myself killed. It was just too much trouble.

Luckily, I had some grace hidden away in secret storage spots for just this kind of emergency. The complicating factor was I didn’t know exactly
where
it was stored. I’d had Alice take the memories away from me so I wouldn’t waste the stuff while I was high or drunk. I’ve never really been the type to resist temptation.

So, first things being first, I had to find Alice.

I went back down the pathway by the Thames. I checked Big Ben as I walked and discovered the afternoon was nearly gone. The place I needed to be was going to close soon, so I picked up my pace.

I went down into the Underground at Waterloo Station and took the subway over to King’s Cross. A few minutes later I was in the British Library. God bless England and its transit system—but not the Queen or any of the other Royals, if it’s all the same to you.

If you’re new to my circle of my friends, you may not know Alice. You may want to keep it that way. Alice is a little unpredictable. When you do find her, she could be marching down the aisle of a library at the front of a line of mannequins made with stitched-together body parts, singing “Ring Around the Rosy.” Or she could be sipping a cup of tea on the back of a giant caterpillar munching its way through the shelves. Or she could be browsing a collection of books that had mirrors for covers, which you didn’t want to look too closely at because once the mirrors had your reflection they didn’t want to let it go.

Luckily for most people, Alice isn’t the easiest person to find. You can only manage it in libraries, by going through all the mis-shelved books until you discover the one that summons her. Which meant the British Library wasn’t the ideal choice for finding her. There were too many books to go through, especially when I didn’t have much time. And most of them were sealed off from the public, so it wasn’t like I could get at them anyway.

Thankfully, though, the British librarians are like the British museum curators and can’t resist showing off their prized treasures. There was an exhibit in one of the galleries, and I went in and began to browse the books secured safely in their glass cases. None of these books were in their proper places, which happened to be the special collections department, so I figured they could all be classified as mis-shelved. Luckily for me, Alice agreed.

Even I have to admit the British Library has an impressive collection. I moved through the crowd, which wasn’t what it should have been given the works on hand, and studied a crumbling manuscript of
Beowulf
. The info on the case said it was the only surviving copy, but I knew better than that. Moving on, I read a page of Dickens’
Nicholas Nickleby
in another case, complete with corrections from the author, and tried to decipher the handwriting on a page of Virginia Woolf’s
Mrs. Dalloway
. I found what I was looking for near the case holding an illustrated copy of Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
. It was hand-written and the illustrations hand drawn. The paper was probably even hand-made. But I didn’t have time to appreciate the craftsmanship because I bumped into Alice, who was looking down at a book in another case. She was wearing a Victorian-style dress—authentic, not stage wardrobe—and twirling a parasol. So my shortcut to her had worked. Beats going through every shelf of ancient tomes in the library.

Alice frowned at the book in the case. “This is all wrong,” she said. “It didn’t happen like that at all.”

I looked at the book. There was an illustration of a woman talking to a rabbit, and another hand-written story. The placard on the case said
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
.

“I know it’s been too long since we’ve talked and all that,” I said, “but I’m in kind of a hurry. It’s a life-or-death kind of thing.”

Now Alice twirled her parasol the other way. A number of beetles fell out of it and scurried underneath the cases. “Which is it?” she asked, not seeming to notice them.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Which is it?” Alice asked again. “Life or death? It can’t be both.”

Frankenstein may have argued with her on that point, but I didn’t want to get into another philosophy discussion. “I’m trying to keep it life,” I told her.

“Good,” she said. “That’s so much more fun than death. Or maybe a different kind of fun. I don’t know which.”

“Alice, I need to know where I hid my emergency grace,” I said, trying to press on to the things that mattered. After all, life and death always sorted themselves out, didn’t they?

Alice closed the parasol and then opened it again in my face. I flinched, expecting a shower of beetles, but there was only the smell of absinthe.

“I’m not allowed to tell you,” she said. “You made me promise. Didn’t you?”

I gently pushed down the parasol with my hand until I could see her again. “If I recall correctly, I had you take the memory of where I’d hid it until I really needed it again. Now I really need it again.”

“That’s right!” she said and threw the parasol to the side, into a group of people clustered around the display case for Blake’s “The Tyger.” “I remember now. And I remember you told me when I gave you the memory back I could take another memory in its place.” She clapped her hands in excitement.

I didn’t remember that, but she could have been telling the truth. How was I to know at this point?

“Fine, just make it quick,” I said. “I need to get going.” The people at the Blake case were eyeing us now. I sensed a call to security was forthcoming.

“Done,” she said. And just like that I remembered. I remembered where the grace was. Such an obvious hiding place. And then I cried out a little when I realized what Alice had taken from me. The words Amelia had mouthed to me at the National Theatre before she disappeared.

“Why that?” I asked. “Why did you have to take that?”

“Because it’s a good memory, silly,” Alice said. “Why else?”

I braced myself on the display case. Alice frowned at me like she didn’t understand. “But it’s what you wanted,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

I took a deep breath and tried to tell myself what was gone was gone. I studied the drawing of Alice and the rabbit in the display case. She looked so innocent there. I thought about what she’d said when she appeared, that the book was wrong. I thought about how she always knew things like that about books.

“What do you know about
Hamlet
?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes all the way back, until only the whites were showing. “He’s such a complainer,” she said.

“I mean the play, not the prince,” I said.

“Oh.” She bit her lower lip and drew blood. “Which version?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I just need to know if it’s cursed. Or something.” I didn’t really know how to explain my encounter with the dead Polonius, wherever it had been.

“Of course it matters,” Alice said, pouting, her eyes still all white. “Every book matters.”

“Alice,” I sighed.

“Well, some of the versions are haunted,” Alice said. “Although I don’t know about the ones in the Forgotten Library.”

“What’s the Forgotten Library?” I asked.

“It’s the place you went when you met Polonius,” she said. “The dead Polonius, not the live one. Because you can’t be both. That’s why you were dead when you were there.”

“How did you know where I went?” I asked. I didn’t remember seeing Alice there, but that didn’t mean anything. She had a strange relationship with libraries.

“I read it in a book once,” she said. She twirled her hair with one finger, and I saw there were some worms hidden away in her locks.

“What book was that?” I asked. If there was a guide to my life, I wouldn’t mind reading it myself.

“It was one of those books that doesn’t have an ending,” Alice said, twirling the worms around her finger now. “And no one knows who wrote it.” Her eyes turned black. “And I don’t want to talk about it because I really don’t like some of the things that happen in that book.”

I knew from experience with Alice that I was never going to get anywhere on that subject, so I let it go.

“Tell me more about the Forgotten Library then,” I said.

“It’s a library of all the books that used to be but aren’t anymore,” she said. One of the worms wiggled into one ear and then out the other, back into her hair. She didn’t seem to notice. “It’s where books go when they’re not books anymore.”

“Can you take me there now?” I asked. Maybe if I could go back to that library I could figure out what was going on.

But Alice shook her head. A couple of dice fell from her hair and she caught them with one hand.

“Oh, I was wondering where those were,” she said and ate them.

“The library,” I reminded her.

“I can’t take you there because it doesn’t exist,” she said. “A library that has all the books that aren’t obviously can’t be. I can only take you to libraries that are.”

“So where is the Forgotten Library then?” I asked, wondering how I’d managed to visit the place, if only briefly.

“You can only find it in other places that don’t exist,” Alice said. “At least that’s what Shakespeare told me when he came back from it.”

“Will visited the Forgotten Library?” I said.

“Maybe he wasn’t real either,” she said, nodding. Then she paused in mid-nod, as an idea struck her. “But then who would have written his plays?” she whispered.

“This is all very interesting,” I sighed, “but it’s not helping me with my problem. Let’s get back to
Hamlet
. So it’s haunted. Like a ghost kind of haunting?”

Alice giggled. “Are there any other kinds of haunting?” she asked.

“I’m not really sure,” I said. I thought things over. I supposed a ghost could be the source of the faerie’s problems. But usually there are more signs of ghosts, like spectral figures wandering around in the dark and complaining about the cold, that sort of thing. Still, it wouldn’t be the first time Morgana hadn’t told me everything.

“Haunted,” I said again. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Could it have been a ghost that possessed me and made me speak those words in that strange library? Could a ghost even possess someone? I’d never seen it happen, but that didn’t mean it was impossible. Besides, I’d seen impossible things happen before.

“Very haunted,” Alice said, nodding. Her eye sockets were empty now.

“All right, let’s skip to the obvious,” I said. “Who’s the ghost haunting it?”

“The Hamlet ghost, of course,” Alice said. “Why would any other ghost want to haunt
Hamlet
?”

I looked around the room to see if anyone was paying attention to us. Everyone was paying attention to us. That usually happened when Alice was around. I had a feeling we would soon be out of time. “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me everything you know about the ghost?”

Alice nodded at the book in the case. “Everything I know about the ghost is in the play,” she said.

I looked down at the manuscript of
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
. Only it wasn’t
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
anymore. Its pages were blank now. Empty. Even the drawings were gone. And the paper looked older, like it was withering away. In fact, it was. It started to crumble before my eyes.

“There’s nothing there,” I pointed out. I tried not to think about what Alice had just done to a national treasure.

“That’s why it’s a ghost,” Alice said, shaking her head at me like I just didn’t get it. “If it was still something, it wouldn’t be a ghost, would it? It would be in a case.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but I didn’t have to come up with anything. A man in a shirt and tie brought the parasol back over to Alice with a frown on his face.

“I believe you dropped this,” he said.

“No, I threw it at you,” Alice said, smiling in delight. “But thank you.” She took the parasol back from him and curtseyed.

The man stepped back at the sight of her empty eye sockets, his mouth hanging open. Then he looked into the display case, his eyes no doubt drawn by the whirlwind of dust that had suddenly sprung up where the manuscript had been.

“Vandals!” he cried. “Terrorists!” He staggered away from us like we were going to turn him to dust next.

We didn’t have much time now, so I took out the book Polonius had given me. “What can you tell me about this?” I asked.

Alice stared at it but didn’t reach for it, which was unusual because she loved books. Especially mysterious books, and I thought this was a very mysterious book indeed.

“What is that?” she asked.

“It’s a book that I took from the Forgotten Library,” I said. I looked down at it. “Isn’t it?”

“I only know the books that are,” Alice said, “and that isn’t.”

“What is it then if it’s not a book?” I asked.

“It’s not anything at all,” Alice said. “Can’t you see that?”

I realized that I wasn’t going to get anything else useful out of Alice, so it was time to say goodbye. More than a few people in the crowd around us were talking on their phones. The security guards and then the police would be here soon. I didn’t want to stick around to find out what came after the police.